Ariah (35 page)

* * *

Bardondour was a hard place, a community carved out of the mountains and surviving through sheer force of will. The elves there are clannish and isolate. The compounders spotted us when the mountain pass turned into a valley. We rode past a field of grain. There was a sharp whistle, and a half-dozen elves stood tall in the fields, turned to us in unison. I could make out the silhouette of bows held at the ready. Shayat whistled back: three long calls followed by a short, high note. After a tense moment, the compounders slung the bows back across their shoulders and returned to their fieldwork.

We rode up to the lodge, which was a huge, sprawling building of rough stone with a thatched roof. The windows were placed high on the walls, with ample room for snowdrifts. In a semicircle behind it sat huts of varying sizes: one was a smokehouse, one was an outhouse, one held grain, one was a small stable, and so on. In the center was a well, and next to that was a fire pit. A clutch of elves sat around the fire, each with one or two small children in arm’s reach. An older woman stood as we approached and dusted dirt off her thighs. “Shayat,” she said. She said it slow, and she dawdled on the last syllable, softening the hard
t
with the shadow of a vowel. “You return already? And with a new crew.” The woman spoke Mountain Lothic, which I had never heard before. It is a hard-bitten dialect, a prickly burr with its own, unhurried cadence.

“
We come seeking hospitality,” Shayat said.

The old woman peered at her. “Hospitality was given a month past, Shayat.”

“
We come seeking it again.”

“
Vanniah’s reclaimed brother, this debt you have stretched far, Tamir,” the old woman said.

Tamir slipped off his camel. He rifled through his packs and pulled out a machete. The polished metal glinted in the light. The people around the fire paused in unison. “The debt is mine for your hospitality,” he said. His voice was deep and flat, maddeningly inexpressive. “A gift for you and yours.”

The old woman raised her eyebrows. “Quite the gift.”

“
For your generosity.”

She took the machete and ran her finger along the blade. “And these men behind you, these new ones gray as the mountains, we should invite them into our homes, Tamir?”

Tamir glanced at Sorcha and I over his shoulder. “Shayat vouches for them.”

“
Do you?”

He hesitated. “I vouch for Shayat,” he said.

The red elves laughed. Some of the tension broke, but they insisted on searching Sorcha and I before they would agree to let us stay there. They searched our bags, and they patted us down. Sorcha grinned the entire time, trading quips with the younger, more curious compounders. For my part, I clamped my jaw shut and let it pass over me. It reminded me a great deal of the border detainment the last time I’d tried to return to Rabatha. They took our camels, fed and watered them and nestled them into a small stable, which was empty but for a mule. They brought us into the lodge to eat and rest and smoke.

The lodge held one long, long room full of tables. Three fireplaces were built into the west wall at equal intervals, dividing the room in stripes of heat and cold during the night. The other wall was peppered with doors, which led to the large kitchen, closets, a loom room, a woodworker’s shop, and two or three storerooms. Ladders between the doors led up to lofts where the compounders slept. The lofts were tucked underneath the slanting roof. No walls divided one sleeping space from another. It was one long stretch of blankets and pillows dotted here and there with parcels of discarded clothing and stuffed toys. The children slept wedged into the narrow eaves with the adults on the interior to keep them from rolling down into the main hall. When we came in, clutches of very young children who had been napping popped up from nests of blankets. Sorcha smiled. “It’s like Falynn’s house, only bigger,” he said.

“
Claim a bower for yourselves,” the old woman said, “but sleep not yet. A guest works, too, when there is work to be done.”

“
Just bed down anywhere?” Sorcha asked.

“
Anywhere what will have you, lad, aye.”

Sorcha handed me his pack and climbed up a ladder. When he was in the loft, I tossed him his pack and my own and climbed up after him. It wasn’t until we’d found a spot for ourselves that I noticed Shayat and Tamir had stayed below in the hall. They watched us, her face intrigued and his perturbed, as they pulled bedding out of their own packs and made pallets on the hall’s floor. We were put to work after that: hauling water from the well to the livestock troughs across the field, washing the oils from fragrant newly-sheared wool, weeding the herb garden, that sort of thing. Sorcha drifted to the shepherds and helped them corral the sheep into the pens for the night. It involved a lot of running and a lot of yelling. He grinned while he did it and came back with an arm slung around a compounder girl’s shoulders, the pair of them sweaty and slightly out-of-breath.

Shayat and I hauled the water. She wore a Qin robe for travel, but pulled it off for the work. Beneath it she wore a loose Semadran shirt and a pair of leather leggings, expertly tailored. It was the first day since we’d left Alamadour that I had not smoked my mind into oblivion, and Sorcha’s words—admonitions? Advice? I couldn’t tell exactly what they were—ran through my mind as I watched her haul the buckets up out of the well. She was stronger than me, and I watched the muscles of her forearms twist and bunch as she worked. She stood with one foot planted against the lip of the well and hauled up the heavy buckets, one after another. She pulled up two buckets for her and two for me. We threaded the handles through poles and balanced the weight of them on our shoulders. She already knew the way to the livestock troughs and led me over. She had me pour the buckets into the trough when we got there. “You said you were from Ardijan, professor.”

“
I am.” Pigs ran up to the trough as I poured in the water, jockeying for space, all uniformly disappointed it was nothing more than water.

“
Well, your friend Sorcha certainly isn’t.”

“
He’s from the City.”

“
If he’s from the City, and you’re from Ardijan, how did the pair of you end up in that apartment together in Alamadour?”

“
It’s a long story.” I stood up and straightened my back. “Mercy, that water is heavy.”

She laughed. “You would make the worst farmer. You’re so delicate.”

I looked over at her and found her smiling at me. I laughed and watched the pigs survey the fresh water with haughty indifference. “You don’t seem to like him much.”

“
Who? Sorcha?” She piled both poles on one shoulder. “If I didn’t like him, I wouldn’t have agreed to travel with him. Come on, we have to water the cows, too.”

We walked back to the well slowly. I felt her watching me for some time before she spoke again. “You’re not so green anymore, professor. You don’t seem so young now.”

“
I wasn’t that young before. It’s only been two years.”

“
You seem older.”

“
Funny, you seem younger. Caravanning suits you.”

She grinned. I blushed, and she grinned wider. “You think so?”

“
Yes. You seem…loose now? More comfortable.”

“
I am.” She nodded, mostly to herself. “I am. May I ask you a personal question, Ariah?”

My head swung over. My heart pounded against my ribs. “Yes?”

She laughed. She clucked her tongue at me, and I stumbled on a patch of grass in my haste to look away again. She caught me by the arm and steadied me. “You came to Vilahna for training, right?”

“
I did, yes.”

“
Was it worth it?”

“
It was. I shouldn’t have avoided it so long.”

“
Is your plan still the same?” she asked. “You’ve got your training, and now you’ll slip back into the ghettos and no one will be the wiser? A secret shaper?”

I realized I hadn’t thought that far ahead. I had assumed for some time I wouldn’t return to the Empire. I left for Rabatha without ever having considered what a return really meant, what it would ask of me and how I would have to adjust. “I…yes, I guess so. I think so.”

There was a twinge of something in her when I spoke, a nascent pull between us that made me look over. She smiled and sped up her pace. “Well, your secret’s safe with me.”

When the work was done, the compounders flocked to the lodge to eat and drink and sleep. Shayat, Tamir, Sorcha, and I sat together, surrounded on all sides by red elves. Sorcha’s shepherd friend sat with us, along with the man who had the mysterious debt to Tamir and a handful of curious children and young men and women. They served us ale, which only Sorcha drank. They served us a meat stew, which only Sorcha ate. Tamir, Shayat, and I made do with bread and boiled potatoes. They passed a pipe, which I smoked right in front of Shayat. Tamir looked on in barely-concealed disgust, but Shayat seemed at first surprised, and then curious. The herb was freshly prepared. It was the best I’ve ever had. I would have been a fool to pass it up. I was thoroughly, irredeemably stoned three hits into it.

Sorcha fit right in there in Bardondour. He captivated attention and held it. He was warm enough, red enough, that the suspicions the compounders held towards the rest of us seemed not to apply to him. He was simply exotic. The shepherd girl offered to marry him that night, only half in jest. Sorcha managed to turn her offer into an opportunity to score us enough Bardondour herb to last the rest of the journey. As the pair of us grew steadily more stoned, we drifted together until I was nestled in the crook of his arm. It was an odd comfort, seeing him in his element like that. It was an odd pleasure to just watch him live his life so fully at that moment, and I felt lucky to be floating around his periphery. With us locked together like that, the ardent attentions of the young and curious compounders began to wane until the night grew very late, and one by one all the compounders climbed to their bowers to turn in. Our bower had been taken. We slept that night wedged amongst piles of red elvish children who seemed utterly unfazed at the strangers sleeping next to them.

CHAPTER 24

Between the mountains and the Mother Desert lie the Inalan badlands. We picked our way down the mountain pass, and the air changed. It is hard to explain, but the air seemed stale. Lifeless. The view when the mountains opened up to the badlands, with the Mother Desert beyond, was breathtaking. The entire world stretched out before us. It looked pristine, untouched. We had gone far enough that Bardondour was hidden again in its valley, and I could not shake the feeling that the four of us were completely alone in the wide world, that it was just us and immense space. It was a terrible, intoxicating feeling. We camped on a ledge of stone overlooking the badlands. Sorcha and I slept together in a tent—that we struggled to set up night after night—borrowed from one of Shayat’s crew who had opted to stay behind in Alamadour. Tamir usually watched us from the edge of camp, snickering to himself.

Shayat put rations on the fire to cook. I sat beside her, and Sorcha sat on my other side. “You two should wear robes from here on out. What you’ve got is not desert wear.”

“
The City’s in the desert,” Sorcha said.

“
The City is a desert city. This is desert travel. I have a spare set of robes, and we can cut down a set of Tamir’s to fit you.”

“
We can?” Tamir said.

“
My father will make you a new set on the house when we get to Rabatha.”

I laughed. Shayat looked over at me, already annoyed. “What?”

“
You still do that?”

“
Do what?”

“
Bargain your father’s services without asking him?”

She rolled her eyes and turned back to the rations. “Anyway, that’s my advice. Robes, not City wear. This part of the trip is the hardest. This route is ideal in many ways, but this section is…less than ideal. We will be in the badlands for at least a week, likely longer. Have either of you been in the badlands that long?”

“
No. Just a day or two on the way to Vilahna,” I said.

“
Me either,” said Sorcha.

Behind us, Tamir let out a sharp, derisive laugh. Shayat watched us closely for a second. She sighed. “You vouched for them, Shayat,” Tamir said. “You’re the one who wanted two city-soft dandies on this route.”